Low-impact Journals Research Articles

Sex and authorship in global cancer research

IntroductionResearch is an essential pillar of cancer control and key in shaping regional cancer control agendas. Imbalances in science and technology in terms of lack of female participation have been...

Surgical Outcome Reporting. Moving From a Comic to a Tragic Opera?

To assess the current quality of surgical outcome reporting in the medical literature and to provide recommendations for improvement. In 1996, The Lancet labeled surgery as a "comic opera" mostly referring to the poor quality of outcome reporting in the literature impeding improvement in surgical quality and patient care. We screened 3 first-tier and 2 second-tier surgical journals, as well as 3 leading medical journals for original articles reporting on results of surgical procedures published over a recent 18-month period. The quality of outcome reporting was assessed using a prespecified 12-item checklist. Six hundred twenty-seven articles reporting surgical outcomes were analyzed, including 125 randomized controlled trials. Only 1 (0.2%) article met all 12 criteria of the checklist, whereas 356 articles (57%) fulfilled less than half of the criteria. The poorest reporting was on cumulative morbidity burden, which was missing in 94% of articles (n=591) as well as patient-reported outcomes missing in 83% of publications (n=518). Comparing journal groups for the individual criterion, we found moderate to very strong statistical evidence for better quality of reporting in high versus lower impact journals for 7 of 12 criteria and strong statistical evidence for better reporting of patient-reported outcomes in medical versus surgical journals ( P <0·001). The quality of outcomes reporting in the medical literature remains poor, lacking improvement over the past 20 years on most key end points. The implementation of standardized outcome reporting is urgently needed to minimize biased interpretation of data thereby enabling improved patient care and the elaboration of meaningful guidelines.

Medical student otolaryngology research: Involvement, perceptions, motivations

ObjectiveOtolaryngology is a competitive specialty that emphasizes research. This study explored medical student involvement in otolaryngology research including training, productivity, perceptions and career goals. Study designCross-sectional survey. MethodsA 27 question multiple choice survey was generated using Qualtrics and posted on an otolaryngology forum (Otomatch) from 10/09/2022 to 12/11/2022. ResultsThirty fourth year medical students (MS4) applying to U.S. otolaryngology residency programs responded. Nearly all (26/30 = 86.7 %) believe there should be dedicated time to research in medical school. MS4 produced an average of 3.23 otolaryngology papers (± 3.13), 5.23 poster presentations (± 9.22) and 2.50 oral presentations (± 5.06). MS4 feel it is more important for physicians to read (mean 4.47 on a 5-point scale; ± 0.76) than to conduct research (3.03 ± 0.87) or to emphasize it in evaluating residency applicants (2.79 ± 0.96). Seventeen respondents (17/30 = 56.7 %) lack interest in continuing research after medical school. Twenty-eight MS4 were evenly split (14/30 = 46.7 %) between a research-heavy or traditional residency. Students felt pressure to publish in low-impact journals (3.93 ± 0.94) for career advancement. ConclusionAll respondents were involved in research yet the majority (16/30 = 53.3 %) eschew a research-heavy residency. Using research to evaluate success entices involvement for some who may not be interested. Pressure to publish may exacerbate ethical issues like inaccurately assigned authorship and deceptive reporting of publications. A decreased emphasis on research will enable students truly interested to continue without pressure to publish, leading to a potential increase in generalizable studies.

Once highly productive, forever highly productive? Full professors’ research productivity from a longitudinal perspective

This longitudinal study explores persistence in research productivity at the individual level over academic lifetime: can highly productive scientists maintain relatively high levels of productivity. We examined academic careers of 2326 Polish full professors, including their lifetime biographical and publication histories. We studied their promotions and publications between promotions (79,027 articles) over a 40-year period across 14 science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) disciplines. We used prestige-normalized productivity in which more weight is given to articles in high-impact than in low-impact journals, recognizing the highly stratified nature of academic science. Our results show that half of the top productive assistant professors continued as top productive associate professors, and half of the top productive associate professors continued as top productive full professors (52.6% and 50.8%). Top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top transitions in productivity classes occurred only marginally. In logistic regression models, two powerful predictors of belonging to the top productivity class for full professors were being highly productive as assistant professors and as associate professors (increasing the odds, on average, by 179% and 361%). Neither gender nor age (biological or academic) emerged as statistically significant. Our findings have important implications for hiring policies: hiring high- and low-productivity scientists may have long-standing consequences for institutions and national science systems as academic scientists usually remain in the system for decades. The Observatory of Polish Science (100,000 scientists, 380,000 publications) and Scopus metadata on 935,167 Polish articles were used, showing the power of combining biographical registry data with structured Big Data in academic profession studies.

Remote Sensing Application in Mountainous Environments: A Bibliographic Analysis.

Advancement in remote sensing platforms, sensors, and technology has significantly improved the assessment of hard-to-access areas, such as mountains. Despite these improvements, Africa lags in terms of research work published. This is of great concern as the continent needs more research to achieve sustainable development. Therefore, this study applied a bibliometric analysis of the annual production of publications on the application of remote sensing methods in mountainous environments. In total, 3849 original articles between 1973 and 2021 were used, and the results indicate a steady growth in publications from 2004 (n = 26) to 2021 (n = 504). Considering the source journals, Remote Sensing was the top-ranked, with 453 total publications. The University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was the highest-ranking affiliation, with 217 articles, and China produced the highest number of publications (n = 217). Keywords used between 1973 and 1997, such as "Canada", "alps", and "GIS", metamorphosed into "remote sensing" between 1998 and 2021. This metamorphosis indicates a change in the areas of interest and an increase in the application of remote sensing methods. Most studies were conducted in the Global North countries, and a few were published in low-impact journals within the African continent. This study can help researchers and scholars better understand the progress and intellectual structure of the field and future research directions in the application of remote sensing methods in mountainous environments.

How do journals deal with problematic articles. Editorial response of journals to articles commented in PubPeer

The aim of this article is to explore the editorial response of journals to research articles that may contain methodological errors or misconduct. A total of 17,244 articles commented on in PubPeer, a post-publication peer review site, were processed and classified according to several error and fraud categories. Then, the editorial response (i.e., editorial notices) to these papers were retrieved from PubPeer, Retraction Watch, and PubMed to obtain the most comprehensive picture. The results show that only 21.5% of the articles that deserve an editorial notice (i.e., honest errors, methodological flaws, publishing fraud, manipulation) were corrected by the journal. This percentage would climb to 34% for 2019 publications. This response is different between journals, but cross-sectional across all disciplines. Another interesting result is that high-impact journals suffer more from image manipulations, while plagiarism is more frequent in low-impact journals. The study concludes with the observation that the journals have to improve their response to problematic articles.

Cluster-randomized trials of cancer screening interventions: Has use of appropriate statistical methods increased over time?

BackgroundIn a cluster randomized trial, groups of individuals (e.g., clinics, schools) are randomized to conditions. The design and analysis of cluster randomized trials can require more care than individually randomized trials. Past reviews have noted deficiencies in the use of appropriate statistical methods for such trials. MethodsWe reviewed cluster randomized trials of cancer screening interventions published 1995–2019 to determine whether appropriate statistical methods had been used for sample size calculation and outcome analysis and whether they reported intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) values. This work expanded a previous review of articles published 1995–2010. ResultsOur search identified 88 articles published 1995–2020 that reported outcomes of cluster randomized trials of breast, cervix, and colorectal cancer screening interventions. There was increased reporting of the trials’ sample size calculations over time, with the percentage increasing from 31% in 1995–2004 to 77% in 2014–2019. However, the percentage of calculations failing to account for cluster randomization did not change over time and was 17% of studies in 2014–2019. There was a nonsignificant trend towards increased use of outcome analysis methods that accounted for the cluster randomized design. However, in lower impact journals, use of appropriate analysis methods was only 80% in 2014–2019. Only 33% of studies reported ICC values in 2014–2019. ConclusionFor cluster randomized trials with cancer screening outcomes, there have been improvements in the reporting of sample size calculations but methodological and reporting deficiencies persist. Efforts to disseminate, adopt and report the use of appropriate statistical methodologies are still needed.

The very first sentence in research article introductions: A rhetoric comparative approach

The current study explores the rhetoric and stylistic properties of the very first sentence that scholars generate in their research article introductions. The study draws upon a corpus of 502 sentences written in the fields of linguistics and translation, half of which are collected from national low-impact journals affiliated with Gulf universities in the Middle East while the other half are elicited from international high-impact journals. The study shows that half of the authors in high-impact journals as opposed to a quarter of the authors in low-impact journals provide citations to their very first sentence. These preferences are accounted for by the distinction drawn by Swales (1990) between centrality claims and topic generalizations under Move 1. Contra the predictions made by Create A Research Space Model proposed by Swales (1990, 2004), the results show that the authors of high-impact journals are more liberal in starting their introduction with a sentence of Move 2 or 3 type. In contrast, the authors of low-impact journals prefer to begin with a sentence of Move 1 type that is shorter in word count, more metaphorical, less academic as well as full of typos and grammatical errors.

EDITORIAL COMMENT

The authors queried PubMed between 2015 and 2020 to evaluate the proportion of female first and last authors in 18 urology journals categorized into high-, medium-, and low-impact factor groups. Binary gender was determined using the Gender-Api website (https://gender-api.com). In their study results, women comprised 21% of first authors (8029/37,413) and 15% of last authors (4232/28,414). When stratified by impact factor, low-impact journals had the highest proportion of female authors and high-impact journals had the lowest (P <.001).

Prospective analyses of sex/gender-related publication decisions in general medical journals: editorial rejection of population-based women’s reproductive physiology

ObjectiveTo assess whether editorial desk rejection at general medical journals (without peer review) of two clinical research manuscripts may relate to author gender or women’s physiology topics. Given evidence for...

Authorship Gender Composition in Urology Literature From 2015 Through 2020

ObjectiveTo describe the current landscape of first and last female authorship in urology journals relative to the journals’ impact factor. We hypothesized that women would have a smaller proportion of publications in journals with higher impact factors. MethodsEighteen urology journals were divided into groups based on impact factor accordingly: from 33.2 to 6.2 were classified as high (European Urology, Nature Reviews Urology, The Journal of Urology, BJU International, Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases, and The Journal of Sexual Medicine), from 5.8 to 5.0 as medium (Asian Journal of Andrology, European Urology Focus, Sexual Medicine Reviews, Bladder Cancer, Prostate and World Journal of Urology), and from 4.8 to 2.2 as low (Urologic Oncology, Journal of Endourology, Neurourology and Urodynamics, Urology, Journal of Pediatric Urology and Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery). A computer script was designed using Python to search PubMed and record first and last author of publications between 2015 and 2020. Gender was determined by Gender-Api (https://gender-api.com). Names with an accuracy of <90% were excluded. Type of peer-review and scope of each journal were also analyzed. Statistical analysis was performed using Matlab. ResultsA total of 37,413 first and 28,414 last authors were identified during the study period. Overall, women represented 21% (8,029/37,413) of first and 15% (4,232/28,414) of last authors. Women were significantly less published in high impact journals compared to both medium and low impact journals (P <.001 in all). Among all journals, articles with female first authors were more likely to have a female last author (OR: 2.72, CI: 2.5-2.9, P <.001). Subspecialty journals had more female last authors than general journals (P <.05), and female representation increased if reviews were double-blinded (P <.001). Over the last 6 years, there has been a significant increase in female senior authorship among all journals (P = .045). ConclusionThe proportion of female authorship was significantly lower in higher impact urology journals. While the underlying cause is likely multifactorial, this finding highlights a gender discrepancy that may impact women's ability to achieve career goals in academic medicine when compared to their male counterparts.

A scoping review of research on tertiary English writing in the Saudi context

We provide a scoping overview of research into the topic of teaching English composition in the tertiary Saudi context. Our aims are to identify current trends, research design and conduct, and determine future agendas within this area. This bibliometric study examines papers in this area over the past two decades. A total of 133 papers that have been published between January 2000 and December 2020 were collected and analyzed in respect to the following themes: (a) context and participants, (b) topics, (c) research methodology and data sources, and (d) journals and publications. The results show that the majority of the participants were gender segregated and undergraduates majoring in English or preparatory year students. The most common topics are perceptions and computer assisted language learning. Quantitative methods were overwhelmingly present with 75.9% of the papers with either an exclusively quantitative or mixed-method approach; surveys being the most frequently used data source in both cases. The papers were found to be published mainly in a few journals, some of which might be considered predatory. The reasons why many have resorted to publishing in these low-impact journals are discussed.

Industry 4.0: An analysis of the production of scientific papers based on indicators

The application of technologies related to Industry 4.0 is already underway in countries such as the United States, Germany, China, South Korea and Japan. Given the importance of using new technologies of Industry 4.0, listed in the scientific literature, we aim to understand how international academic publications on Industry 4.0 are characterized, based on their scientific indicators. In order to meet the objective, scientific publications were extracted from the Web of Science platform and analysis techniques such as Bibliometric, Spearman Correlation and Clustering (Cluster) were used. The revelations have pointed out that the Industry 4.0 theme is recent in terms of scientific publications by the Web of Science platform. In this database, the first Management, Business and Economics academic publications took place in 2016, although from 2018 onwards, there is a significant increase of academic publications in the researched area. Empirical disclosure provided evidence that the various measurements of indicators on the Impact Factor and number of citations converge with each other. The results pointed to a gap in indicators that demonstrate academic publications with expressive citations in low-impact journals. Finally, it is pointed out that these quantitative disclosures contribute to the decision-making initial process, but with limitations, considering the importance of interpretive analysis of the scientific literature content.

Gender trends in authorships and publication impact in Academic Radiology\u2014a 10-year perspective

ObjectivesTo analyze the development of publication numbers of female authors in high-, medium-, and low-impact radiological journals.MethodsIn this bibliometric analysis, gender of the first (FA) and senior author (SA) was assigned to all original research articles and reviews, published in 10 high-, medium-, and low-impact radiological journals in 2007/8 and 2017/18. The adjusted event rate (AER) and adjusted odds ratio (AOR) were calculated using mixed logistic and multinomial logistic regression models to assess and compare female publications according to impact factor, journal, author position, and combination.ResultsThe proportion of female FA and female SA in N = 6979 (2007/2008) and N = 7383 (2017/2018) articles increased to 29.1% and 16.1% in 2017/2018, respectively. While most female authorships were continuously observed in medium-impact journals, the strongest increase occurred for both female FA (AOR 2.0; p < .0001) and SA (AOR 2.1; p < .0001) in low-impact journals. Female SA published significantly more often in a low- (AOR 1.5) or medium- (AOR 1.8) than in a high-ranking journal. Among the high-ranking journals, female FA published most frequently in European Radiology (32.4%; 95% CI [29.3–35.8]; p < .0001), female SA in Investigative Radiology (15.9%; 95% CI [13.7–18.4]; p < .0001). Male same-sex authorships decreased (AOR 0.9), but remained at least twice as common as all-female or mixed authorships.ConclusionThe increase in female authorship is reflected in all impact areas. Female FA and SA increased most in low-ranking journals but are most common in medium-ranking journals. Female SA remain rare, especially in high impact journals.Key Points• Compared to the proportion of female radiologists worldwide, female senior authors are underrepresented in all impact areas, in particular in high-impact journals.• Among the included high-ranking radiological journals, female first authors and senior authors were strongest represented in European Radiology and Investigative Radiology, while across all impact areas they mostly published in medium-ranking journals.• Female author combinations were more frequent in low- and medium- than in high-ranking journals, whereas male author combinations remained more common than female senior author collaborations in all impact areas.

The Protocol Gap.

Although peer review is considered one of the main pillars of modern science, experimental methods and protocols seem to be not a rigorous subject of this process in many papers. Commercial equipment, test kits, labeling kits, previously published concepts, and standard protocols are often considered to be not worth a detailed description or validation. Even more disturbing is the extremely biased citation behavior in this context, which sometimes leads to surrogate citations to avoid low-impact journals, preprints, or to indicate traditional practices. This article describes some of these surprising habits and suggests some measures to avoid the most unpleasant effects, which in the long term may undermine the credibility of science as a whole.

Branding Spin-Off Scholarly Journals: Transmuting Symbolic Capital into Economic Capital

In this article, we analyse a relatively recent commercial strategy used by large academic publishers to capitalize on the brand names of their most prestigious scientific journals. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s model of capital conversion, we explain how publishers transfer the symbolic capital of an already prestigious journal to derivative journals that share in the prestige of the original brand and transform it into new economic capital. As shown by their high impact factors, these newly created journals benefit from the name recognition and reputation of the originals after which they are named. Plus, through a manuscript routing mechanism, the publishers recycle some of the submissions rejected by their highly selective flagship journal by redirecting those manuscripts, along with their reviews, to derivative journals or to one of the lower-impact journals on their list, which may require an article processing charge for publication.

INVITED ARTICLE: Building Journal Impact Factor Quartile into the Assessment of Academic Performance: A Case Study

This study aims to provide information about the Q Concept defined as the division of journal impact factors into quartiles based on given field categories so that the disadvantages resulting from the direct use of journal impact factors can be eliminated. While the number of "Original articles published in the Web of Science (WoS) database-indexed journals like SCI, SSCI and A&amp;amp;HCI" is an important indicator for research assessment in Turkey, neither the journal impact factors nor the Q Concept of these papers have been taken into account. Present study analyzes the scientific production of the Amasya University researchers in journals indexed in WoS database in the period 2014-2018 using the Q concept. The share of publications by Q category journals as well as the average citations received by the works from Amasya University were compared to the average situation in Turkey and other different countries in the world. Results indicate that the articles published by Amasya University researchers were mostly published in low impact factor journals (Q4 journals) (36.49%), in fact, only a small share of papers were published in high impact journals (14.32% in Q1 journals). The share of papers published in low impact journals by researchers from Amasya University is higher than the Turkish average and much higher than the scientific leading countries. The average citations received by papers published in Q1 journals was around six times higher than papers published in Q4 journals (8.92 vs. 1.56), thus papers published in Q1 journals received 30.02% citations despite only 14.32% of the papers was published in these journals. The share of papers published which were never cited in WoS was 27.48%, increasing from 9.68% in Q1 to almost half (48.10%) in Q4. The study concludes with some suggestions on how and where the Q Concept can be used.

A Protocol of Methodological Practices in Human Sexuality Journals

The paper examines the editorial policies and pattern of Scopus impact factor (CiteScore). The authors extract the information from the journals about instructions for authors and calculate the impact of CiteScore on editorial policies. The authors pilot bivariate analysis to compare the methodological policy issues of high impact and low impact journals. There is no involvement of human participants; therefore, the current research does not require an ethical review. Results were published in peer-reviewed journals and related conferences. A limitation of this study is language bias due to the selection of English-only articles.

Journal impact factor, trial effect size, and methodological quality appear scantly related: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BackgroundAs systematic reviews’ limited coverage of the medical literature necessitates decision-making based on unsystematic review, we investigated a possible advantage of systematic review (aside from dataset size and systematic analysis): does systematic review avoid potential bias in sampling primary studies from high impact factor journals? If randomized controlled trials (RCTs) reported in higher-impact journals present different treatment benefits than RCTs reported in lower-impact journals, readers who focus on higher-impact journals for their rapid literature reviews may introduce bias which could be mitigated by complete, systematic sampling.MethodsWe randomly sampled Cochrane Library (20 July 2005) treatment reviews that measured mortality as a binary outcome, published in English or French, with at least five RCTs with one or more deaths. Our domain-based assessment of risk of bias included funding source, randomness of allocation sequence, blinding, and allocation concealment. The primary analysis employed logistic regression by a generalized linear model with a generalized estimating equation to estimate the association between various factors and publication in a journal with a high journal impact factor (JIF).ResultsFrom the 29 included systematic reviews, 189 RCTs contributed data. However, in the primary analyses comparing RCT results within meta-analyses, there was no statistically significant association: unadjusted odds of greater than 50% mortality protection in high-JIF (> 5) journals were 1.4 (95% CI 0.42, 4.4) and adjusted, 2.5 (95% CI 0.6, 10). Elements of study quality were weakly, inconsistently, and not statistically significantly correlated with journal impact factor.ConclusionsJournal impact factor may have little to no association with study results, or methodological quality, but the evidence is very uncertain.

QUALIS: The journal ranking system undermining the impact of Brazilian science

A system called QUALIS was implemented in Brazil in 2009, intended to rank graduate programs from different subject areas and promote selected national journals. Since this system uses a complicated suit of criteria (differing among subject areas) to group journals into discrete categories, it could potentially create incentives to publish in low-impact journals ranked highly by QUALIS. Here I assess the influence of the QUALIS journal ranking system on the global impact of Brazilian science. Brazil shows a steeper decrease in the number of citations per document since the implementation of this QUALIS system, compared to the top Latin American countries publishing more scientific articles. All subject areas showed some degree of bias, with social sciences being usually more biased than natural sciences. Lastly, the decrease in the number of citations over time proved steeper in a more biased subject area, suggesting a faster shift towards low-impact journals. Overall, the findings documented here suggest that the QUALIS system has undermined the global impact of Brazilian science, and reinforce a recent recommendation from an official committee evaluating graduate programs to eliminate QUALIS. A system based on impact metrics could avoid introducing distorted incentives, and thereby boost the global impact of Brazilian science.